Kereist oth uebyd gwryd garwy.
With a coward Dyfrdonwy water ill agrees:
From thy boyhood hast thou loved Garwy’s valour.
The prince praised was Ỻywelyn ab Iorwerth, whom the poet seems to identify here with the Dee, and it looks as if the water of the Dee formed some sort of a test which no coward could face: compare the case of the discreet cauldron that would not boil meat for a coward[36].
The dwy, dwyf, duiu, of the river’s Welsh name represent an early form dēva or dēiva, whence the Romans called their station on its banks Deva, possibly as a shortening of ad Devam; but that Dēva should have simply and directly meant the river is rendered probable by the fact that Ptolemy elsewhere gives it as the name of the northern Dee, which enters the sea near Aberdeen. From the same stem were formed the names Dwyf-an and Dwyf-ach, which are treated in the Triads as masculine and feminine respectively. In its course the Welsh Dee receives a river Ceirw not far above Corwen, and that river flows through farms called Ar-đwyfan and Hendre’ Ar-đwyfan, and adjoining Arđwyfan is another farm called Foty Arđwyfan, ‘Shielings of Arđwyfan,’ while Hendre’ Arđwyfan means the old stead or winter abode of Arđwyfan. Arđwyfan itself would seem to mean ‘On Dwyfan,’ and Hendre’ Arđwyfan, which may be supposed the original homestead, stands near a burn which flows into the Ceirw. That burn I should suppose to have been the Dwyfan, and perhaps the name extended to the Ceirw itself; but Dwyfan is not now known as the name of any stream in the neighbourhood. Elsewhere we have two rivers called Dwyfor or Dwyfawr and Dwyfach, which unite a little below the village of Ỻan Ystumdwy; and from there to the sea, the stream is called Dwyfor, the mouth of which is between Criccieth and Afon Wen, in Carnarvonshire. Ystumdwy, commonly corrupted into Stindwy, seems to mean Ystum-dwy, ‘the bend of the Dwy’; so that here also we have Dwyfach and Dwy, as in the case of the Dee. Possibly Dwyfor was previously called simply Dwy or even Dwyfan; but it is now explained as Dwy-fawr, ‘great Dwy,’ which was most likely suggested by Dwyfach, as this latter explains itself to the country people as Dwy-fach, ‘little Dwy.’ However, it is but right to say that in Ỻywelyn ab Gruffyđ’s grant of lands to the monks of Aber Conwy they seem to be called Dwyuech and Dwyuaur[37].
All these waters have in common the reputation of being liable to sudden and dangerous floods, especially the Dwyfor, which drains Cwm Straỻyn and its lake lying behind the great rocky barrier on the left as one goes from Tremadoc towards Aber Glaslyn Bridge. Still more so is this the case with the Dee and Bala Lake, which is wont to rise at times from seven to nine feet above its ordinary level. The inundation which then invades the valley from Bala down presents a sight more magnificent than comfortable to contemplate. In fact nothing could have been more natural than for the story elaborated by the writer of certain of the late Triads to have connected the most remarkable inundations with the largest piece of water in the Principality, and one liable to such sudden changes of level: in other words, that one should treat Ỻyn Ỻïon as merely one of the names of Bala Lake, now called in Welsh Ỻyn Tegid, and formerly sometimes Ỻyn Aerfen.
While touching at p. 286 on Gwaen Ỻifon with its Ỻyn Pencraig as one of those claiming to be the Ỻyn Ỻïon of the Triads, it was hinted that Ỻïon was but a thinner form of Ỻifon. Here one might mention perhaps another Ỻifon, for which, however, no case could be made. I allude to the name of the residence of the Wynns descended from Gilmin Troedđu, namely, Glyn Ỻifon, which means the river Ỻifon’s Glen; but one could not feel surprised if the neighbouring Ỻyfni, draining the lakes of Nantỻe, should prove to have once been also known as a Ỻifon, with the Nantỻe waters conforming by being called Ỻyn Ỻifon. But however that may be, one may say as to the flood caused by the bursting of any such lake, that the notion of the universality of the catastrophe was probably contributed by the author of Triad iii. 13, from a non-Welsh source. He may have, however, not invented the vessel in which he places Dwyfan and Dwyfach: at all events, one version of the story of the Fan Fach represents the Lake Lady arriving in a boat. As to the writer of the other Triad, iii. 97, he says nothing about Dwyfan and his wife, but borrows Nefyđ Naf Neifion’s ship to save all that were to be saved; and here one may probably venture to identify Nefyđ with Nemed[38], genitive Nemid, a name borne in Irish legend by a rover who is represented as one of the early colonizers of Erin. As to the rest, the name Neifion by itself is used in Welsh for Neptune and the sea, as in the following couplet of D. ab Gwilym’s poem lv:—
Nofiad a wnaeth hen Neifion
O Droia fawr draw i Fôn.